Juneteenth has been recognized as a US federal holiday since 2021 and acts as a day to celebrate the end of slavery in the country – but millions of Americans will not have the day off today, 19 June, to mark the occasion.

At least 30 states – including most recently Rhode Island and Kentucky – and the District of Columbia recognize Juneteenth as an official public holiday, according to the Pew Research Center.

Three years after it was made a federal holiday, Juneteenth 2024 marks a day of celebration as well as education.

The federal holiday known as “Second Independence Day,” marks the day the last African American slaves were notified that they had been freed from their masters, the National Museum of African American History and Culture said.

America today celebrates Juneteenth, a commemoration both of the horrors of the nation’s original sin, slavery, and of its end.

The holiday traces to victorious Union Gen. Gordon Granger’s June 19, 1865 order putting the Emancipation Proclamation (issued in January 1863) into full legal effect across Texas and freeing all the state’s remaining slaves.

The celebration has since spread, especially in the South, culminating in federal recognition in 2021 by President Biden

“Party with a purpose” is a phrase that fits well with most Black holidays and occasions. Historically, Juneteenth has been no different. Yet something curious has happened since the day became a federal holiday in the United States in 2021. This jubilant celebration of African American independence has somehow become less fun.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed a sweeping executive order Monday issuing pardons for more than 175,000 marijuana and drug paraphernalia convictions.

The mass order for low-level possession charges will be given to nearly 100,000 people, The Washington Post reported.

Moore said the decision is intended to address decades of social and economic injustice, including Marylanders of color being denied housing, employment and educational opportunities based on minor criminal records.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) made history Monday with a mass pardoning of more than 175,000 marijuana convictions, a move he said would changes the lives of tens of thousands of Marylanders after the state legalized recreational cannabis last year.

“We know that legalization does not turn back the clock on decades of harm that was caused by the war on drugs,” Moore said during a pardoning ceremony at the State House on Monday.

Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order pardoning an estimated 175,000 of marijuana-related convictions on Monday.

Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) has paid out millions in contracts to insiders, newly released tax documents show.

The nation’s largest BLM organization approved lucrative contracts to firms owned by members of the organization’s leadership and their family members between July 2022 and June 2023, tax filings show. The shuffling of charitable funds to private companies owned by interested parties raises considerable ethical concerns given the lack of oversight and the possible conflicts of interest, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The road to understanding Donald Trump’s appeal to a segment of Black America — and his hopes of winning back the presidency by pulling a few precious votes away from Democrats — runs through Trump’s Black friends, a loose set of iconic sports figures from the 1980s.

An Oklahoma judge dismissed the reparations lawsuit filed by the last three known survivors of the Tulsa race massacre on Friday, court records show.

The three had been locked in a yearslong court battle against the City of Tulsa and other groups and officials over the opportunities taken from them when the city’s Greenwood neighborhood was burned to the ground in 1921.

Contemporary reports of deaths began at 36, but historians now believe as many as 300 people may have died, according to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. Thousands were left homeless.